Bouncy and Shiny
'Hairspray' is a joyful romp, with Travolta the only tacky note
By Andy Klein
It says something about the times we're living in that a John Waters film - even the relatively user-friendly Hairspray - could become a Broadway musical and now, under the direction of Adam Shankman, a movie musical as well ... with a budget roughly 40 times the original.
The 1988 release was a watershed in Waters's career. The films with which he first made an impression - Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos (1972), and others designed to enshrine "bad taste" - helped create the "midnight movie" phenomenon. His budgets grew slowly, and his work got slicker, until, with Hairspray, he broke through to a much broader audience. It was a John Waters film even your mother could love ... at least if she could deal with matriarch Edna Turnblad being played by a flamboyantly gay, 300-pound guy in drag - i.e., Divine.
What seemed surprising at the time was how sweet the film was. Stripped of Waters's usual shock tactics, what became clear was a kind of benevolence lurking in his work; this was a director with a deep affection for even his tackiest characters.
The original Hairspray was sort of a
quasi-musical itself, with rock 'n' roll dance shows at its center. But most of the score comprised pre-existing pop tunes. Composer/lyricist Marc Shaiman (who cowrote the songs for South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut) and playwright/humorist Mark
O'Donnell (whose Elementary Education is the funniest collection of its kind since S.J. Perelman passed from the earth) - together with Thomas Meehan and Scott Wittman - adapted the film into a hugely successful stage musical, which, in turn, is the basis for the new film.
The main promotional hook here is the casting of John Travolta as Edna, but, as in the original, this is a decidedly supporting part. Stepping into the role that made Rikki Lake a star 19 years ago, Nikki Blonsky plays protagonist Tracy Turnblad, a very comfortably padded teenager, circa 1962, who lives to dance. Edna, a laundress, disapproves of Tracy's burning ambition to become a regular on The Corny Collins Show, a local, American Bandstand-like TV program; but husband Wilbur (Christopher Walken) believes Tracy should follow her dream. (With Travolta and Walken as parents, it's no wonder Tracy can dance.)
In fact, Tracy gets the gig and becomes a sensation, winning the heart of Link Larkin (Zac Efron) and frustrating the romantic and professional aspirations of spoiled rich girl Amber von Tussel (Brittany Snow), whose mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the station manager. Intertwined with this is a plot about desegregation: Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) hosts the show's "Negro Day" once a month, but rebellious Tracy thinks the black kids should be part of the everyday program, even if it means - gulp! - black boys dancing with white girls.
This insane fear of mixing the races probably seems quaint today; in fact, it seemed quaint in 1988. But the racist characters in Hairspray, who may seem like over-the-top caricatures - particularly the mother (Allison Janney) of Tracy's best friend, Penny (Amanda Bynes) - are, if anything, toned down from the reality of the time. For perspective, consider this: As late as 1968, there was a panic in the network boardrooms when British singer Petula Clark spontaneously touched the arm of Harry Belafonte for a few seconds on a TV special.
As a general rule, musicals tend to be less realistic in tone than their source material, which makes sense, what with people bursting into song, accompanied by an invisible orchestra, while walking down the street. But, in this case, the opposite is true. The characters and the tone in Shankman's film are not as cartoonishly exaggerated as in Waters's ... with one crucial, highly problematic, exception: Travolta's performance is so arch that it makes Divine's look like kitchen-sink realism.
While everyone else is (relatively speaking) underplaying, Travolta is overplaying. When Divine did Edna, it was conceivable that viewers might temporarily forget they were watching a man. Travolta is a good actor and a sometimes great movie star, but his "stunt casting" is apparent at every second: You're not only always aware that he's a man; you're always aware that he's Travolta.
This distraction is a function of both his celebrity and the unnatural way he acts here. Swaddled in his fat suit, talking in a contrived high voice, and gesturing in a manner better categorized as "effeminate" than "feminine," he seems to be constantly winking at us, reminding us that he's a "real" man, just playing at being in drag - unlike Divine, who was long since at home playing women.
The main upside of Travolta's presence is, obviously, the box-office value. But aesthetically the film would have been much better served with Harvey Fierstein reprising his stage performance. (We don't see nearly enough of Harvey on the big screen.) The secondary upside is simply the spectacle of seeing Travolta and Walken play a married couple ("You thrilled to them in Pulp Fiction! Now see them as you never imagined!").
Luckily, the rest of the casting is great. Bynes is perfect as Tracy's slightly ditzy friend, and Motormouth Maybelle might as well have been written for Latifah. Rewatching the Waters film, it's striking to see how much Latifah's natural presentation resembles that of the late, great Ruth Brown, for whom the part probably was written. (Brown died late last year.)
The only two originals who return, as best as I could tell, are Jerry Stiller, who 19 years ago played Wilbur and now plays Mr. Pinky, the effusive plus-size clothing retailer; and Waters himself, who appears ever so briefly during the opening production number, as the neighborhood flasher. The character he played in the older film - a loony psychiatrist, charged with deprogramming Penny's "pathological" romantic feelings for Maybelle's son, Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) - has disappeared.
The other notable change in the story is the omission of the "retards" Tracy was once forced to mingle with in a Special Ed class. Now, Special Ed has given way to Detention Hall, where it's just Tracy and a bunch of spectacularly cool black students.
Thanks to the casting, to Shaiman's genuinely memorable score, and to Shankman's direction, Hairspray is - reservations be damned - totally enjoyable. The opening number sets the energy level on High, and the proceedings rarely flag from there. But it's hard to avoid imagining how much better the film might have been without Travolta. Still, with Blonsky really at the center of the story, and Efron, Kelley, Bynes, and Latifah all delivering exactly what's called for, the Travolta problem isn't enough to dampen the joyous tone.
Published: 07/19/2007
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